"It was all bad, and it was bad because I lost the magic... You will never see it. No one will ever see it..."

"... because I am embarrassed at the poor work," said Jerry Lewis about his 1972 movie "The Day the Clown Cried," a drama about a clown forced to entertain children in a Nazi death camp. But there's a bit of video from it on YouTube now. Was it really so completely horrible? Even if it was in the end, a terrible idea — but wasn't it basically the idea in "Life Is Beautiful"? — can't we see it now, with the understanding that it was a mistake and extract the good and learn from the lesson about what badness is?

It ended with a notoriously cringe-inducing scene of cavorting clown Lewis leading the laughing kids into the gas chamber. Overcome by the grief of what he is being forced to do, he chooses to stay in the gas chamber with them as they are killed.

Let us see it. Of all the Nazi-related things to be ashamed of... maybe this excessive shame about bad art is shameful. Or is it the other way around... and more bad art should be destroyed before anyone can see it?